Casinos have been subject to a variety of devious unlawful schemes pursuant to which the perpetrators attempt to fraudulently obtain money or credits from the casino. In one such scheme, a blackjack dealer may arrange with a co-conspirator to allow the co-conspirator to "win" large amounts from the house. Individual players have also devised unlawful schemes enabling them to "win" at various gaming tables including blackjack and craps. As a consequence, casinos expend considerable time and effort in observing both players and game operators in an effort to make certain that all of the games are fairly played.
It is known to embed a radio frequency transponder in a gaming chip, and one such construction is shown in Rendleman et al U.S. Pat. No. 5,166,502. The transponder can be tagged with information concerning the chip, such as the chip identity and value. According to this patent, a reading device can be placed in a slot machine to prevent the use of counterfeit gaming chips in the slot machine. However, this does not address the many schemes that have been devised to cheat the house on the gaming tables.
It is also known to employ machine readable identification cards for players of slot machines. This enables a computer to track various information about the player of the slot machine such as that player's win-loss record against the slot machine, the total dollar amount played, the number of times that player played the slot machines, the amount paid out to the player and the number of hours played. This information can then be used to award complimentary features known "comps" or credits to the player.
Attempts have also been made to manually track various information about players at the gaming tables. For example, it is common to attempt to observe various matters such as the amount of the player's buy in, the time played, the average bet of the player and players win-loss record. However, tracking this information manually is difficult, time consuming and often inaccurate.